AI in Education – Friend or Foe?

Summary:

Anette Hestbæk Jørgensen, School Director at Aurehøj Gymnasium (high school), and Sine Zambach, Assistant Professor at CBS (Copenhagen Business School), share their experiences with AI in education so far, how they plan to deal with its challenges, and their plans to make the most of AI's opportunities.

 

Key Take-aways:

AI is a game-changer
AI is having an enormous impact on schools and on education in general. School leadership and teachers are sharing information and experiences widely - both in official education contexts and informally among schools.

 

AI upsides

AI can be particularly useful to get students started with ideas that can be improved upon. It can help to define concepts and, for teachers, it can be useful for producing metaphors that can help to explain concepts. Teachers can use AI to nuance materials to suit the interests and abilities of different types of students. Students will eventually be able to benefit from a personal AI "tutor". And visual or storytelling creativity can be enhanced.

 

The teacher's journey

High school teachers are primarily focused on being diligent around their own subjects. They want to be on top of something that they introduce for the students - so they typically don't like taking the lead with AI in the classroom. Currently, the hottest topic for teachers is how students can use AI to cheat. The downside of focusing on this aspect is that it creates a highly unwelcome atmosphere of distrust between teachers and students. Plagiarism has also become harder to spot - and to prove.

 

Back to pen and paper?

Where the past decade has seen an increase in digital examination approaches, Aurehøj Gymnasium plans to get students using pen and paper much more. Trying to make the students not be digital all the time, and closing down the computer screens.

 

Essential skills for an AI future

Schools will likely focus more on specific skills, with the goal of producing democratic, critical thinkers. The ability to ask the right questions (prompting) should also be taught in schools. The overall aim is to motivate students to use AI reflectively, to use it correctly and not use it for cheating. Students should use AI as a helper, but they should not do theirwhole assignments with it.

 

School's not out - it's more relevant than ever
AI won't change the school system overnight - schools are very similar to the way they were 30 or 40 years ago. And with new skills required for an AI-powered future, schools may become more important than ever.